Jungle Sweet Jungle

I think that I officially love my site. Or maybe I just am starting to finally feel comfortable here. I have been in Sarapiquí now for two whole months and it is finally starting to feel like my new home. I am, in this moment, very proud to say that I live in this beautiful hidden jewel of Costa Rica. Although I am still in the same house I am beginning to form a network of people that I feel comfortable enough with to start to be myself and I can also relate to their lifestyle because I too am part of the community Their problems are my problems. If there isn´t water I am also suffering just like they are. If it is nice enough to go for a swim in the river it is just as much mine as it is theirs too. We are all living together and neither one of us is better or worse than the other. I have never felt this before in my life and I cannot wait until the moment where they too see me as another addition to the community.
I think that I came to this realization today when I was at Rosa´s house. Rosa is my community counterpart who is a police officer and knows everyone and their mom! She is such a great woman and I really look up to her. Her family has taken me under their wing and it does help that her mom makes the best fried chicken that I have ever eaten! So, I was sitting on the front porch talking about things in the community and groups that I can get involved with and there was a young girl that walked by who I slightly recognized. The first week that I was here in my site, I remember this so well, I was sitting at the bus stop trying to get back to my house from Puerto (the center of town). I, being so new, did not know that the bus only passed once an hour and I was waiting like a fool at the bus stop for a very long time. I started talking to a young girl that had told me that she was pregnant and I figured that she couldn´t be more than 16 and I wished her good luck with everything and once we both got on the bus that was the last that I ever saw her...until today. The girl that had walked by was the same pregnant teenager that I had spoken with about two months ago.
So I told Rosa that I knew the girl and she told me that the girl was only sixteen and had a baby about a month and a half ago. This means that the week after I talked to the girl at the bus stop she had the baby. So I saw the baby and she was so cute like all babies are but this had me thinking of my time in this little pueblo and the time that I still have to be here. I am really part of the barrio and it was a pretty good feeling to have this sensation. Even though I have been here for so little time I think I will have moments in which this feeling reoccurs. I hope it happens a lot! I also realized that I will most likely be working with this young girl again sometime down the road because she is an adolescent mother and I hope to be able to do project with the population of adolescent mothers here in my site among many other things that I am starting to see very necessary!
After my analysis of these feelings I decided that Sundays are my favorite day of the week. Sundays always bring so much hope for a new week and the more you relax on a Sunday the more energy you will have to start the week off right. For now all the kids are on vacation and my site is pretty quiet. I am trying to take advantage of this time too to get my ideas in order so that I can have some direction for the other half of the year. My director comes this week to hopefully approve my new house and if everything goes as planned I will be in Cristo Rey ready to get to work and get to know the people with who I will be sharing a community with for the next 22 months.

So here is to the words, We, Ours, Us, and Together!!!

Happy Sunday!!!